In 1453 (below), Timur of the Ming Dynasty failed to conquer the Ming Dynasty, and went west to Europe and the Ottomans beat Venice
In 1405, before Ming Chengzu Zhu Di sent the Three Treasure Eunuch Zheng He to the West, Timur, the strongest challenger from the northwest, died on the way to the Ming Dynasty.
The Timurid Empire collapsed, and the space it had left in Central and West Asia was quickly filled by the resurgence of the Ottoman Empire and the Aries Empire of the Turkmens. A century later, the newly rising Persian Safavid Empire replaced the Aries dynasty. For more than 200 years, Mesopotamia became the object of a tug-of-war between the Ottomans and Persia.
The idea of Western Christians trying to travel to the East through West Asia came to an end.
Title image: "St. George Slaying the Dragon" is based on illustrator Julio J. Engraving by Clovio, after 1522, in the collection of the Royal Library of Belgium
A Venice: Constantly swallowing a knocked out tooth
Since the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople, it was regarded as a common enemy by the Papal States, the Holy Roman Empire represented by the Habsburgs, Venice, Genoa and other countries, and Venice was pushed to a strategic position as important as Hungary, becoming a bridgehead against infidels in Europe itself.
In the previous introduction to the Venetian School, through the paintings of several generations such as Jean-Til Bellini, Titian, Veronese, etc., we have a general glimpse of this embarrassing period in Venice.
Titian's teacher, Jean-Tyre Bellini, for example, was sent to the Istanbul court in 1479 as a cultural envoy. He stayed there for a year and a half, leaving the last portrait of Sultan Mehmed II.
Photo: Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II, Collection of the National Gallery, UK
Titian's most famous altarpiece, Madonna of Pesaro, was hired by Jacopo Pesaro, who had served as Papal Commander of the Navy.
This Pesaro saved face for the devastated Venice in the war against Turkey, and on June 28, 1502, his Venetian navy won the battle of Santa Maula (now Lefkada) in the Greek Ionian Islands. (See Titian's Greatness: The Altarpiece Revolution, Our Lady of Pesaro and the Pesaro Family)
Figure Titian, Madonna of Pesaro, 1519-26
Titian also painted Pope Alexander IV to Bishop Jacopo Pesaro to St. Peter, which is supposed to be a small victory worthy of the Venetian flaunt, in 1503 when the Pesaro family presented a letter to Giovanni. Bellini placed the order, and Giovanni completed the first draft design, which was later completed by Titian.
In fact, the entire Renaissance Venice, although it looks lively and happy on the surface, but the bitterness in the heart is really swallowed again and again.
Ten years after the fall of Constantinople, Venice fought the Turks from 1463 to 1718, and the two sides fought seven major wars, known as the Seven Wars of Constantinople.
And just when Venice and Turkey were in the middle of their game, they were almost divided up by their European comrades.
In 1508, when the Italian Renaissance was at its highest, Pope Julius II, together with HRE, Spain, England and others, formed the "League of Cambrai" in Cambrai, the Netherlands, the original intention of this alliance was to divide Venice, at least, but also to recapture the Romagna cities occupied by Venice from the Holy See, when Florence, Milan, Ferrara and other Italian states also joined this alliance.
In April of the following year, the old pope solemnly announced that all Venetians would be excommunicated and that a ban on worship would be imposed throughout the territory.
The League of Cambrai was originally a papal gang that wanted to take Venice aggressively, but later in 1509, when Venice was about to be destroyed by France, it was reconciled by Julius II and Spain.
The main reason for the old pope's reversal was that he believed that Europe still needed Venice as a barrier against Ottoman Turkey, so he began to unite with Venice to form an anti-French alliance.
In this chaotic situation in Europe at this time, I am introducing El. When El Greco, he also mentioned a meaningful engraving.
The author of the engraving is El Greco, a friend of the Greco who made him in Rome. In "Emperor Charle's Triumph over His Enemies and His Ascension to the Throne" by his employer, Charles V of the Habsburgs, Clovio (1498 – 1578), with an eagle in his crotch holding a rope binding his nemesis on the left and right.
Illustration Clovio, "Emperor Charles's Victory over the Enemy and Ascension to the Throne" is now in the National Library of England.
The three on the left are: Suleiman I of Ottoman Turkey (r. 1520-1566), Pope Clement VII of the Medici who holds a shield with a family coat of arms called "pills", and King François I of France, who holds a shield with the fleur-de-lis of the House of Valois in his left hand;
On the right, the three electors of the Holy Roman Empire, from left to right: Johann III of Cleves (1490-1538), Johann Frederick, Elector of Saxony (1503-1554) and Philip I the Magnanimous (1504-1567).
Although Clovio's ass is a little crooked, it is a reflection of the situation in Europe in the first half of the 16th century.
Schematic diagram of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire
Although Venice was no match for Clovio, or perhaps in the eyes of Charles V, it did become a mainstay of the Ottoman Turks' invasion of Christendom in the east.
And when these countries in the east of Europe continued the spirit of the crusade and fought with Turkey, they looked back and saw that the countries in the west had already set sail and left them far behind.
2. Timur, who died before leaving the school
After looking at the complex and varied rivals of the Ottoman Empire to the west, let's take a look at the Turkmen's main rivals in the east, the Aries dynasty founded by the Turkmens and the Safavid Empire in Persia.
As mentioned last time, when the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I conquered the Balkans and began to lay siege to Constantinople, he was beaten by Timur from the east, and Bayezid I was captured in the Battle of Ankara (near Ankara, now Turkey's second largest city), in 1402, which delayed the death knell of the Byzantine Empire by 50 years.
Prior to this, the Ilkhanate (1256-1335), the ruler established in Western Asia by Hulegu, the grandson of Genghis Khan Temujin and son of Tolei, was in decline, and the Turkic Mongol nobleman Timur (1336-1405) of Western Chagatai created his own Timurid Empire (1370-1507) around 1370.
Almost at the same time, a nomadic Turkmen tribe founded the Black Sheep Dynasty (1375-1468) in northern Mesopotamia in 1375, with a Shiite faith. To the north of the Black Sheep dynasty, another Turkmen also founded the Aries dynasty (1378-1468) in 1378, a Sunni religion that was initially subjugated to the powerful Timurid dynasty.
When Timur, who was particularly able to fight, expanded westward, he encountered the increasingly powerful Ottomans, and in the Battle of Angola between the two sides in 1402, Timur also took the vassal kingdoms of the Black Sheep Kingdom and the White Sheep Kingdom.
Timur, who had continued the life of the Byzantine Empire for half a century, quickly established a vast empire after a series of conquests and conquests: from the Pamir Plateau in northern India in the east, Asia Minor in the west, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf in the south, and the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea in the north.
Schematic map of Timur's territory before his death
But his appetite was too great, and he didn't have time to digest the territory he had just annexed, so he thought of another big move.
In the same year of Timur's victory over the Ottomans, in the farther east, Zhu Yuanzhang's fourth son, Zhu Di (1360-1424), pulled his nephew off the horse in a fierce battle for the throne and became the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, with the era name "Yongle".
Timur seemed to see an opportunity in this, and he hoped to take advantage of Zhu Di's unstable foothold and plan to conquer the Ming Dynasty eastward.
After making sufficient intelligence and logistical preparations, Timur's army began a mighty crusade to the east. The vanguard under his grandson Khalil set out from Tashkent, crossed the Tien Shan Mountains in early 1405, and advanced to the Ili River on 6 January.
At the end of 1404, he himself led a large army from Samarkand to the city of Otrar (the confluence of the Areth and Syr daryals rivers in present-day Shymkent, Kazakhstan), but in February of the following year, Timur, who was entrenched in Shymkent, fell ill here.
It's like fate.
It was precisely because of the defenders stationed in Khorezm in 1219 that they framed the Mongol merchants and killed the envoys and merchants sent by Genghis Khan, triggering the Mongol expedition to the west. Timur's death here 200 years later also marked the end of the Mongol era.
Timur Receives Emissaries During His Attack on Balkh in 1370 illustration from a 16th-century Turkish manuscript
The golden age of Persian painting began during the reign of the Timurid dynasty, and this "Sacrifice of Isaac" shows the influence of the Mongol style in Persian painting in the 13th-15th centuries.
After Timur's death before he could get out of school, his descendants were not angry, not only did the Ming Dynasty abandon halfway, and the empire fell into turmoil and rapid decline due to family infighting, but his descendants went south to India after a world and founded the famous Mughal Empire (1526-1857), which is not listed here for the time being.
III. "The Third Persian Reich"
When the resurgence of the Ottoman Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453, the former vassal state of the Timurid dynasty, the Sunni Aries dynasty, began to rise, and its ruler was the third monarch Uzun. Uzun Hasan (1423-1478).
In line with the principle that the enemy of the enemy is the friend, Wuzun. Hassan became the target of the papacy, Venice, and others, who hoped to use this new power to flank the Ottoman Turks, including the most attractive artillery among the empty promises made by the Venetians for this new ally.
Wuzun. Hassan was also very aggressive, and in 1468 he destroyed the Black Sheep dynasty in the south and expanded his territory to all of Mesopotamia.
Again, the good times did not last long, and in 1478 Wuzun. After Hassan's death, the country's power quickly declined.
In 1501, the Shia Safavid Order of Azerbaijan under the rule of the Black Aries Dynasty staged a mutiny, overthrew the Aries Dynasty, and established the Safavid Empire of Persia (1502-1736), with the capital at Tabriz.
Isma'il I (1487-1524), the founder of the Safavid Empire, was the founder of the Safavid Empire. Hassan's grandson, who at the age of 13 led 1,500 men to Azerbaijan and conquered almost all of Persia, Armenia and most of Mesopotamia in seven years.
Schematic map of the territory of the Safavid Empire in Persia
This is the third time that Persia has unified Persia after the Achaemenid Dynasty of ancient Persia and Sassanid Persia, so it is regarded as the Third Persian Empire.
Thus, from the 16th century onwards, the Safavid Empire of Persia, with Shiism as its state religion, became a direct opponent of the Sunni Ottoman Turkish Empire in the east.
In 1513, the Turkish Sultan Selim I brutally suppressed a Shiite rebellion, and the two sides began the Iraqi Turkish war, which lasted for more than two centuries.
Mesopotamia has also become a place of contention between the two sides.
One of the consequences of the "Iran-Turkey War" was the interruption of important strategic trade lines between Europe and Asia, and the other result was the rapid decline of civilization in West Asia.
The two empires, immersed in the glory of the former feudal monarchy, have become the colonial targets of the Western capitalist powers in modern and modern times.
In the battle for Mesopotamia that began in the 18th and 19th centuries, the story of these two great empires was like a few camel bells floating in the yellow sand at sunset.
This article is "The Puzzle of Civilizations Between Two Rivers: A History of Mesopotamian Art"
Part 7 of the series